When Doc Mike North broke his leg, this affected his social and professional life as an active person. In particular, with a normal cast, it is not possible to fly – and he flies a lot! Indeed, if you want to fly, doctors normally have to cut the cast in half, put it on your leg, wrap it with a bandage, so that you can loosen it on the plane and your leg can expand with the pressure. The problem is that you cannot walk on that!

Doc North contacted FATHOM (www.studiofathom.com) to create together a better solution. They had the idea for a more aesthetically pleasing and technological cast and have been able to turn the breaking of a leg into a positive experience! The FARO Edge ScanArm HD played an important role in reaching this result.

At FATHOM, they took a scan of Doc North’s leg and got an STL mesh. NURBS curves became the solid model of Mike’s leg. That model was used to build the cast, which is basically an offset of that solid model. They brought it into SolidWorks where they added the split line that separates the two bodies of the cast… This would help alleviate pressure on his legs when travelling on planes.

In the sole, they added additional components, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a force sensitive resistor and other technological features that allow you to sense what the human is doing.

All things that can also be exploited by Mike’s doctor, who can e.g. track the pressure put on the cast and track the movements.

They called this first prototype the “BoomCast”, because it also has a sound system!

But the development process continues and the project is now an open source.